Well I’m cooking on gas now and getting into the nitty gritty of P3O, and this chapter is great for anyone who has come unstuck when thinking about the benefits of your PMO, what value does it offer the organisation. At a previous PPSOSIG conference we covered the benefits of the PMO – see more details on “All Aboard the PPSO“, and it’s obviously an area that most PMOs struggle with – what are the real tangible benefits of the PMO that will make the senior managers sit up and take notice. This chapter provides a good few examples; “Reduction in delays”, “cost savings through correct resource requirements”, “reduced costs” etc and I have no doubt a PMO Manager picking up this chapter would be able to quickly think of benefits applicable to their current set up just by reading through the examples (and case studies).
In this chapter it also starts giving an overview of the process to follow whether you’re “developing, enhancing or re-energising” your PMO. I think this is an important angle that needs emphasising to potential buyers of the book – this book is not just about putting in a PMO in your organisation for the first time, there are a lot of questions, hints, tips, case studies and text that enables an existing PMO Manager with an existing PMO to take time out and reflect and think about what they’ve got and where they’re heading. Often it takes someone or something outside of your current situation to help you think “yes we’re doing OK with what we have” or “we still have some work to do”.
The other helpful part of this book is scaling; PMOs in small organisations or small in size (just one or two people working within it) are not forgotten about. There are small sections throughout the text that pay special concessions to these smaller set ups which is great to see, at the PPSOSIG conferences we see alot of smaller set ups.
Now one thing that struck me about the process of P3O set up (and chapter 2 only covers the highlights – there’s more detail further in the book) is that it’s obviously very MSP (Managing Successful Programmes), it talks about having a Mandate in place, identifying stakeholders, vision statement and outline blueprint before the development of the business case. In the previous chapter blog post I talked about the seniority of the PMO Manager and my concern for P3O is this – wouldn’t the PMO Manager already have taken their MSP accreditations and had exposure to programme management best practice? If so, what does P3O offer them that’s new?
The next chapter – “What is a P3O Model?” will be covered shortly
